CEIL DE BCEUF. 361 



A murmur arose, and grew louder and louder ; three 

 hundred thousand persons gave up drinking sugar in 

 their tea ; indignation meetings were held ; and peti- 

 tions were sent into Parliament by the ton. Every- 

 thing seemed to show that the nation had begun to 

 loathe the trade in flesh and blood, and would not be 

 appeased till it was done away. And then came 

 events which made the sweet words Liberty, Humanity, 

 Equality, sound harsh and ungrateful to the ear : which 

 caused those who spoke much of philanthropy, and 

 eternal justice, to be avoided by their friends, and 

 perhaps supervised by the police ; which rendered 

 negroes and emancipation a subject to be discussed 

 only with sneers and shakings of the head. 



When the slave-trade question had first come up, Mr 

 Pitt proposed to the French Government that the two 

 nations should unite in the cause of abolition. Now 

 in France the peasantry themselves were slaves ; and 

 the negro trade had been bitterly attacked in books 

 which had been burnt by the public executioner, and 

 the authors of which had been excommunicated by the 

 Pope. Mr Pitt's proposal was at once declined by the 

 coterie of the (Eii de Bceuf. In the meantime it was 

 discovered that the French nation was heavily in debt ; 

 there was a loss of nearly five million sterling every 

 year ; a fact by no means surprising, for the nobles 

 and clergy paid no taxes ; each branch of trade was 

 an indolent monopoly ; and poor Jacques Bonhomme 

 bore the weight of the court and army on his 

 back. Chancellors of the Exchequer one after the 

 other were appointed, and attempted in vain to grapple 

 with the difficulty. As a last resource, the House of 

 Commons was revived, that the debt of bankrupt 

 despotism might be accepted by the nation. A Par- 



